Favorite Movie Posters

This list was inspired by @woopak_the_thrill's question, What are some of your favorite movie posters?, after adding about 10 posters in one answer, I figured I'd make a list of it. Often movie posters don't get their proper credit and I think it's about time that some of my favorites get their fair share of love! Leave your faves in the comment section, if you want. I'm sure I'm missing out on some goodies- like, yes Back to the Future, which was already an answer to Woo's question.

Both of these posters do a really good job of showing the loneliness that Travis felt. In this first poster, it shows the degradation, depravity, and ugliness he saw in his world. The tagline perfectly describes Travis' mindset and story: On every street there's a nobody who dreams of being a somebody. He's a lonely forgotten man desperate to prove that he's still alive.

In the second poster, you get, again, how incredibly lonely he is. He's a cabby in NYC but, it's night and there's no one around. The only sign of life are the pinpricks of light peeking out through the windows of the tenement building behind him. Everything is in darkness and shadows except Travis and behind him, his cab.

Yes, I may be a little biased since this was by far my favorite movie that I was ever in, no, I'm not a superstar, I was a featured extra and it was a blast. Heck, Alec Baldwin bought me a birthday drink! The cast and crew were phenomenal but, you have to admit this is one pretty awesome movie poster! Love...you have to play to win...indeed we do!

One of my favorite scripts and movies, this poster is styled after those pulp fictions that usually have great titles like "Candid Confessions: I Lived and Loved Like Starr Beautiful", "It Ain't Hay" (with a skeleton rowing a boat with a cigarette on what you may assume is the River of Hades, and all sorts of fun stuff you can find on Flickr.

Mean Streets, another favorite. This poster perfectly captures the message of this film: the daily struggle to survive on the mean streets of Little Italy, New York. I love how it's in black, white and gray with Mean Streets in blood red capital letters.

This poster takes after those photos that are made up of a bunch of dots, so that when you move slowly away and focus on a spot it makes a whole photo. Luckily, it doesn't make us work that hard. But, it's cool how it takes scenes from the movie, places them in a TV set like square, to form a portrait of its main character, Truman, whose every move is televised and made into the ultimate reality show. There's just one problem, Truman has no clue it's a TV show.

This scene is the most technically impressive of the whole movie and happens to make quite a pretty photo. A boy, a bike, and his friendly extraterrestrial go for a fly on All Hallows Eve...what more could you ask for?

This movie and this poster still freak me out to this day. The poster does a perfect job of building up a mystery. Unlike the rest of these posters, you don't get the whole story or even the whole idea of the story from it. It almost makes it so you HAVE to see the movie to figure it all out.

Unlike #8, this cover tells you exactly what's in store for you: it lists the DJs that are in the documentary, it's a close-up of a hand putting the needle on a record, and it's called Scratch- with a turntable and a needle as a T in the title. If you haven't seen this film and have any interest in DJing, you should definitely give this a go! This focuses more on the history and culture of turntablism rather than anything else. I love the design of it.

This is what it's all about, isn't it? It's what happens to us when we're waiting at the bus stop. The tagline is true: The world will never be the same once you've seen it through the eyes of Forrest Gump. I picked it for its personal relevance to me. In high school, my first real job was at a video store and I had a Chem teacher that was the real life version of Forrest Gump but, not as cool. He lived with his mom and had the same hair cut since 2nd grade. So, being the brat that I was, I changed the name in this poster to reflect Tom Burns, the teacher's name and hung it in the classroom. It got a bunch of laughs, those damn kids can be so mean. So, Mr. Burns if you're reading this, I did the poster and I'm sorry. I guess you got me back by getting me kicked out of school for quoting #3. We're even.

I like all of the above posters. In addition, there are many great posters from my generation. i.e.

o The 10 Commandments

o Snow White

o The Snow Queen

o True Grit

o The Beatles

o 101 Dalmatians

o The Sky Above and the Mud Below

o Ben Hur

o Fantasia

o Butterfield 8

o Psycho ( which should never have been made )

o Klute and many other wholesome movies

In fact, my father worked on many of these posters as a lithographer. He painted many pictures privately as an artist. His art was a hobby essentially although he employed some of his expertise in the area to the lithographic work. Below is a definition of a lithographer.

LOL Klute (and many other wholesome movies)....I don't know if I'd call Klute wholesome but, that is really cool that your dad was an artist for many of those. They don't ever get the attention and accolades they deserve. Great list, here as well, maybe you can make your own with pictures of the posters?

JSMarescaAugust 06, 2011

In comparison to Psycho, Klute is miles ahead. I agree with you somewhat. On Golden Pond is more in the nature of wholesome. In addition, my dad was a lithographer. He worked in the field for three decades and did artwork privately. Some of his best pieces of artwork were:

o Indian Chief o African Lion o Adam and Eve Nude Scene and several others that were given away to friends over the years

Lithographers do much of the work up until the point that the camera man/person shoots the film for mass production .